Despite the fact that I am perishing daily, hourly, minutely from the heat and from dehydration, I’ve had the time to take in several movies and a great deal of television over the past few days.
Friday I watched WALL-E, Pixar’s newest computer-animated tour-de-force, a hilarious and amazing film, right up there with Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. WALL-E is the name of a tiny, mobile trash compactor/robot, left behind on a deserted Earth to clean up the mountains and avalanches of garbage humanity left behind. He spends his days creating neat skyscrapers out of trash cubes, and, in his free time, he collects interesting items (bras, sporks, lighters) and learns about love and dancing from an old, ailing videocassette tape of Hello, Dolly. When a sleek, white, ovoid probe named EVE shows up on a secret mission, he instantly falls in love with her, and ends up following her back to one of the massive spaceships mankind is now living on. There, he inadvertently uncovers a seven-hundred-year-old plot, becomes the leader of a rebellion of broken robots, wins EVE’s heart and saves humanity from itself.
Friday evening I went out on the town with my friend Craig, listened to live music at a dueling piano bar, sang along to ’80s music, ogled hot guys and got drunk. That was the first time I ever had to spend the night on a friend’s couch because I was too inebriated to get myself home. The next morning, which saw me shambling through downtown Salt Lake with greasy hair and sweaty, slept-in clothes, was also a first.
Saturday afternoon I went with Craig to see Wanted, a film about an ancient fraternity of assassins, starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie . . . and Angelina Jolie’s Scary Scowl of Death. (Watch for it 24 seconds into the trailer.) The movie got mixed reviews, which is easy to understand in retrospect: the premise is interesting, and the effects are mind-blowing, stunning, unreal. On the other hand, the story lies somewhere between “Huh?” and “Meh,” which is a really good way to piss off the critics, who are forced to watch movies even if they don’t want to.
Saturday night I had my own little Doctor Who marathon, with the first of the “new” series—the season with Christopher Eccleston and a blonde I keep thinking I’ve seen somewhere else but don’t think I really have. I don’t like it as much as its spin-off Torchwood, mainly because there’s no sex or swearing [too wholesome!], but apparently I like it well enough to watch several episodes end-to-end.
This morning, while I was stumbling around getting my morning coffee, I dropped a mostly empty glass container of coffee granules on my left foot. It hurt a lot, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. After I was done swimming with QUAC, I noticed that I had a nice lump and a livid bruise on the top of my foot. So now I’m at work, hobbling around with my left shoe untied, trying not to bang the lump into anything. In my T-shirt, cargo shorts and untied Skechers, I make such a dignified librarian.
Tonight: more Doctor Who?
